Raynia Kinniston, 95, restocks supplies Friday in the emergency department at Mercy General Hospital. She’s logged about 47,000 hours at the hospital.
Raynia Kinniston, still a pistol at 95 years young, puts nearly every other volunteer to shame.
On Wednesday afternoon, she was doing her regular shift at Mercy General Hospital’s gift shop after finishing her regular shift restocking supplies in the emergency room.
And I do mean regular.
On April 1, she’ll celebrate 50 years of service at the hospital on J Street. She will have logged some 47,000 hours, the equivalent of more than two decades of full-time work.
Like clockwork three days a week, she takes the bus from her Land Park home to Mercy, where she starts in the emergency room. Sometimes, a patient is rushed in while she’s there, so she comforts them with water or juice or a blanket – if a nurse gives permission, she’s careful to say. “I’ve been there when they’ve lost people,” she says.
In the afternoon, she works at the lobby information desk or helps run the gift shop.
“She’s a taskmaster, she cracks the whip,” her partner there, Bebe Wright, says with a laugh.
Wright is no slouch herself, having volunteered at the hospital for 10 years, but says, “I’m a short timer. No one compares to Raynia.”
Kinniston, while she wears her hospital service pin with pride on her pink smock, says Mercy has “given a lot more to me than I have given to it. I’ve had a lot of happy times.”
Her connection to the hospital, though, is even more personal, and somewhat sad. Her husband died there in 1954 from stomach cancer. For his final four months, she says, she spent every day at the hospital. Her son was born there, but she was volunteering in the gift shop seven years ago when she found out he had died of a massive heart attack.
“A lot of my life transpired there,” she says.
Her service has not gone unnoticed. Last year, Shawn Anderson, a motivational speaker from San Diego, awarded her one of 10 “Extra Mile” prizes nationwide. Also last year, Mayor Kevin Johnson had Kinniston at his side to promote his volunteerism drive.
Last week, the mayor invited her to his State of the City speech and had her stand up to be recognized.
“This is the best of Sacramento, it truly is,” Johnson said, urging Sacramentans to double their volunteer hours from 1.5 million last year to 3 million this year. The 850 Sacramento Metro Chamber members and guests rose to give Kinniston a standing ovation, bringing her to tears.
Even after reaching the half-century milestone, she has no plans to stop volunteering. “I’m going to do it as long as I can,” she says. “That’s what’s really keeping me going.”